Saving Erica
By J.A. Melville
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Synopsis
Erica Rothman looked to have it
all. Beauty, a successful modelling career, overseas travel, money and a
handsome boyfriend or did she? Looks can be deceiving.
After fleeing the UK and her
violent, abusive boyfriend she gave up modelling and came home to Australia to
lick her wounds after Liam had attempted to kill them both in a car accident
during a fit of jealous rage.
She wanted to keep what had
happened to her a secret from her family until her brother Nathan accidentally
learns the truth.
When he takes her to see the
project he and his business partner and friend have bought to make money on, it
seemed innocent enough until she meets his friend.
Zane Harrison is gorgeous, sexy
and everything a woman could ever want in a man. He was probably used to having
women fall at his feet. That’s exactly what Erica did when she met him; she
literally fainted at the man’s feet.
The attraction is there and he
could be the perfect man for her but is it too risky to get involved with him?
Can she escape the horrors of her past? Will she ever be able to overcome just
what it is about him that affects her so much?
WARNING: THIS BOOK IS
INTENDED FOR THOSE 18 YEARS AND OVER. IT CONTAINS CONSENSUAL SEX SCENES,
DESCRIPTIONS OF ABUSE AND ONE NON CONSENSUAL SEX SCENE. HOWEVER THIS IS NOT
DARK EROTICA AND I DO BELIEVE IN HAPPILY EVER AFTER.
This book is a sequel to Taming
Eric but set 15 years later. It is a standalone novel and it is not necessary
to read Taming Eric first.
Excerpt
Erica let herself into her
parents’ home, the home she’d lived in from birth and listened for a
moment to the laughter and voices coming from the dining room. It was Christmas
Eve and she was late for the family dinner. Not that her family knew that
since she hadn’t been able to guarantee she’d make it home for Christmas
anyway.
It was just lucky that filming
had finished early and she’d been able to get a seat on the first flight
out of London. Someone had cancelled making a seat available and although she’d been
stuck with an economy seat and jammed in between a quite large woman and a man
who had spent most of the flight trying to chat her up, it had been worth
it to get home that little bit quicker. She knew she could have called
Daddy and he would have sent the company jet but she wanted to surprise
her family when they really weren’t expecting her.
She stopped for a moment to check
her appearance in the mirror over the hall stand and noticed the dark
circles under her blue eyes, a blue that vivid they appeared almost purple
under some lighting. Her auburn hair hung down one shoulder in a plait
that finished just below her full breasts and she ran her hands down over
her dress trying to smooth out the creases after being crammed in a plane
for so many hours.
Slowly she moved towards the
dining room, smiling as the voices grew louder the closer she got. Nathan
was telling them something about his and his girlfriend Taylah’s last holiday together.
Apparently she had managed to lock herself out of their room while only wearing
a towel and Erica grinned to herself when everyone burst out laughing.
She made it to the dining room
doorway and got her first look at her family in three months. Alice was
there as were Beverly, Tom and Maggie but her eyes shifted past them to the tall
figure of her Father standing by the window. Even in his early 50’s he was still
a very attractive man and to her he was her hero. She loved her Father,
she always had. He had been her protector, her savior and the person who
could never say no to her.
Nathan was seated at the table,
the light shining on his strawberry blonde hair with Taylah by his side;
her dark almost exotic looks a complete contrast to him.
Brooklyn and Charlotte occupied
another couple of chairs at the table and Erica noticed Brooklyn had
somehow talked her parents in to letting her get a nose piercing if the diamond glinting
in it was any indication. At 15 they were looking so much more mature than she remembered
but the phones in their hands as they texted or were on Facebook proved that
they still had some maturing to do yet.
Her Mother was seated up the
other end of the table, looking her usual unruffled self, her auburn hair
the exact same color as Erica’s twisted into some elaborate knot at her nape.
Erica smiled at the sight of them
all together, all the people she loved most in her life. Suddenly her
Mother looked up and saw her standing there and a wide smile transformed her face
at the sight of her eldest daughter.
“Erica, darling, you made it.”
She stood up with her usual grace. Her Mother’s mention of her name was
enough to draw the attention of everyone else and the chatter stopped briefly before
everyone started getting to their feet to come and greet her.
Before anyone reached her, she
saw her father coming towards her with that long stride of his and he
caught her up, swinging her around and around in his arms despite her protests
and squeals at him.
He lowered her feet to the floor
and pulled her into his arms for a hug, holding her tight and Erica realized
at that moment how much her father had missed her. They’d been inseparable until
her career had started to take off and now she was often gone for weeks or even
several months at a time. Lately it was months and months in between
visits back home.
“Daddy.” She said and that was
all she could say as the tears started to fall and when she finally pulled
back enough to see her father’s face, he had tears rolling down his cheeks too.
“I missed you so much Daddy.”
“Not as much as I’ve missed you
sweet pea.” He told her huskily before hugging her tightly to him again.
Erica knew her father hated her
job. She’d heard often enough about how he used to only date models years
ago before Mum’s time. He’d found them shallow and self-centered so he had
found it hard to accept that his own daughter had gone on to become a highly
successful model.
He’d never once tried to stop her
and had always been supportive and going by the collection of her
professional photos hanging around the house, he was proud of her despite her career
choice. Technically she hadn’t intended to get into modelling but it had been
the fairy tale beginning for her. After being spotted at sixteen and
talked into having some studio shots taken the rest as they say was
history.
She had become an extremely
wealthy woman from modelling but all that money didn’t mean much when her
personal life was one huge mess. She had come home not just to see her family
but to lick her wounds and recover from the physical and emotional damage done
to her by her ex-boyfriend. She didn’t dare tell her father about what
Liam had done to her. She just wanted to spend time with her family and
try to push the whole horrible nightmare to the back of her mind.
With a huge grin on her face she
pulled out of her father’s arms and turned to greet the rest of her
family, her arms spread wide. “Well come on then, is Daddy the only one pleased
to see me? Where’s my hugs?”
Her Mother stepped forward, a
wide smile on her face, her arms outstretched and Erica walked into her
embrace, dropping her head on her shoulder as she breathed in her Mother’s familiar
vanilla scent. Before she could get too comfortable though, she was pulled into
Nathan’s arms and given a hug that tight, she winced. She fought to keep
the pain from her expression because her pain was from more than his big
bear hug embrace, it was pain from bones that were still healing. She
didn’t want anyone to see that though so she struggled to mask her reaction from
her family. She didn’t want anyone to know what had happened. She just needed
time to get over this with the people she loved most around her. She
needed time to forget what Liam had done to her. God, just thinking about
him sent a shiver through her and Erica pulled away from her brother and
with a false smile on her face she said. “I’m starving. Can your poor old
daughter and sister get something to eat before I collapse?”
With bursts of laughter and Nathan
teasing her about her not being entitled to anything more than a lettuce
leaf given she was some big shot model, her family cleared a spot for her at the
table.
Brooklyn and Charlotte dropped
kisses on her cheeks when she sat down. Erica took the plate of food from
her mother’s hands that seemed to have miraculously filled itself and began to eat.
The constant noise and laughter from her family was both comforting and
familiar to her. She realized just how much she’d missed it, how much
she’d missed them. Being back with them like this would help for a short
time at least. She could forget about the past, forget about the pain and try
and push the hell Liam had put her through from her mind.
Meet
J.A. Melville
From my teenage years, all I
wanted to do was become a writer one day. Even now as an adult woman with a
partner and three children who are not so little anymore, I've always lived
with my head in the clouds, a dreamer, often amusing myself with my own
imagination. It might have taken me awhile to finally live my dream, but I did
it. I hope to one day be good enough to stand beside the many talented writers
out there who have kept me entertained with their wonderful stories over the
years. I live in a sleepy country town in Tasmania, Australia with my partner
and three children plus our 4 cats, dog and cattle. I've had to overcome many
emotional obstacles along the way to get to this point and attempting to
self-publish a book does tend to make a person feel like they've thrown
themselves in at the deep end of the pool. Here's hoping some of you actually
like what I write and save me from drowning in the deep end as I probably
forgot to mention, I can't swim.
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